


Inanna's Descent to the Underworld

by godisthedice



Category: The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:47:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10001282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godisthedice/pseuds/godisthedice
Summary: Inanna wasn't exactly a man. Not completely. And he knew what it meant when someone looked at him with desire in their eyes.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malfoyisms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malfoyisms/gifts).



> For [Heather](http://girlblunders.tumblr.com/), one of my best friends and favorite partners in crime, the Baal to my Inanna. Happy birthday, gorgeous, and here's to me still surprising you with fic when we're old, gray, and even crankier than we already are.

_"I was his gateway. I took him into the underworld. I took him everywhere."_  
—Inanna

* * *

_I._

No one had ever looked at Zahid the way that they looked at Inanna. 

Zahid had been a faded sketch of a person, shades of gray, done in pencil and smudged until he was indistinct. Hardly anyone had looked at Zahid at all, and when they did, it was always on the tip of his tongue to thank them for noticing him. There were people who had seen Zahid every day, for years, who wouldn't have been able to point him out in a crowd.

When he became… more, when he was Inanna instead of Zahid, it was as if someone had inked over all those faded, smudged lines to throw them in sharp relief, filled in the spaces between them with brilliant colors. Everyone looked, then. They couldn't miss him. He was beautiful, in a way that he had never been beautiful before. He was bright, he was bold, he wasn't afraid of anything.

No one went back over him with an eraser, wiped away the smudges that had been Zahid. No one saw those, though. Inanna was too colorful for pencil lines to stand out and mar the image, from afar. No one looked close enough to find the faint traces of the boy he had been. 

No one looked at Inanna the way that Baal looked at Inanna.

* * *

_II._

From the moment that Inanna met the devil, he knew that she was going to lead him into temptation. Lucifer was pale, slender, and wicked. She felt almost familiar, like a dream he'd had once, a long time ago. He'd thought they would have sex; Inanna would have, from the start. She had been the one to say no.

"I only dabble where it's forbidden." She shrugged one fragile shoulder, a smile crooking her lips. "I'm perverse, like that."

"So we're never going to because no one's telling us we can't?" Inanna couldn't imagine any reason it would ever be forbidden. No one had told him no, since he'd become Inanna. No one except Lucifer.

Lucifer wasn't looking at Inanna, anymore. She was looking somewhere over his shoulder. "Oh, I think we will. I'd say be patient, but I try not to encourage any virtues." She brushed her fingers over his arm, eyes still fixed on that same point, and then she was gone, interest waned.

When Inanna looked behind him, all he saw was Baal, turning away.

* * *

_III._

Inanna was the one that kissed first. Inanna was almost always the one that kissed first. He wasn't comfortable with self-restraint. He'd seen Baal looking. Zahid wouldn't have had the confidence to think that those looks might have meant something. It was an easy assumption that Baal was straight, that his only reaction to a man kissing him would have been to punch first, assert his heterosexuality later.

Inanna wasn't exactly a man. Not completely. And he knew what it meant when someone looked at him with desire in their eyes.

He'd lingered, after everyone else, the rest of the Pantheon, had filtered out in ones and twos. He'd watched while Baal let the face he showed them all slip, while the weight of the responsibility he'd taken dropped from his shoulders. He didn't know that Inanna was there, still. He didn't know Inanna was waiting.

Inanna slid his hands over those shoulders, felt the warmth of Baal's skin through the thin fabric of his shirt. "You're tense," he told him. "Let me help."

The barely there brush of Inanna's lips against Baal's was electric. There was a pause, a breath, an eternity, before Baal's lips crashed against his, in return, with the force of a roll of thunder.

Inanna had always heard that you could tell how close a storm was by counting the seconds between the strike of the lightning and the rumble of the thunder. Baal hadn't been as far away as he had thought.

Baal's hand cupped his jaw, held him there like he was afraid Inanna would pull away. Didn't he know? Inanna was never the one that said stop.

* * *

_IV._

The first time Inanna had thought of his skin as light was when he saw it against Baal's. A hand to his bare chest. Their legs twined as they came together, parted, collided again. Caramel and bittersweet chocolate, the two of them.

Baal had never, with a man, he said. Inanna silenced him with his mouth. He wasn't exactly a man. He was more. 

Inanna took him, took all of him, face to face on Baal's expensive sheets, his legs hitched up, knees pressed tightly against the sides of Baal's chest as Baal rocked into him, long and slow and deep. Inanna gripped at those broad shoulders, head thrown back, his entire body tingling. 

He'd never felt so made of stars as he did when Baal buried his face against his neck and cried out, shuddered, came apart.

They laid there, after, in silence except for the harshness of their breaths as they tried to remember how to exist as two separate creatures, again, instead of parts of a whole. When Baal looked at him, after they had pulled themselves apart, there was still desire in his eyes. Desire, and something more.

That was how it would be, then.

* * *

_V._

Inanna took him again, the rest of him, the parts that Baal hadn't shared. Not that night, or the next, but it hadn't taken long. 

He took him with Baal on his belly, Inanna pressing sweet kisses to the back of his neck, every touch a prayer. When Inanna finished his supplication to his god, Baal shattered like an idol made of clay.

When they kissed, after, Inanna counted the seconds and knew that he was in the midst of the storm.

* * *

_VI._

"Valentine." Baal's voice was a rumble in his chest, vibrating against Inanna's cheek as it lay there, pillowed by muscle and silky skin.

Inanna tilted his head to look up at him, a smile playing on his face. "It's a little early to be asking, isn't it? And that kind of question is supposed to come with chocolates."

Better than the rumble of his voice was the way Baal's chest jumped with silent laughter. "My name, before. It was Valentine. I wanted you to know."

Most people, Inanna thought, wouldn't think the name suited him. Inanna knew that it did. Knew what kind of sweetness hid under the act. What else could this man be named but something that brought to mind tenderness?

Inanna hummed, quietly, pressed a kiss against skin that smelled like sweat, cologne, and sex. "Zahid," he said, because he had to. He needed to. He needed Baal to know about the boy he'd once been. "I was Zahid." 

Zahid would never have been laying in bed with a man who looked like Baal, who trailed fingers down his spine and made him shiver, who held him even closer when he did. Zahid would never have had the courage to kiss Baal, to touch him, to make love to him until they were both lying sated, exhausted, happy. Baal would never have wanted Zahid, but he wanted Inanna.

Inanna was satisfied with that.

* * *

_VII._

He had forgotten how dark his skin could look until he saw it against Lucifer's. Caramel and vanilla, as his hands spanned her narrow hips while she rode him. He hadn't been with a woman since before the first time he kissed Baal. It wasn't better, it was just different. She was different. There was nothing tender about the way Lucifer touched him.

When she met his eyes, there was nothing there but lust.

She didn't hold him, after. He didn't want her to; that was for Baal, the soft moments after. She lit a cigarette, while she rested beside him, and smirked at the ceiling.

"Nothing like fucking someone you're not supposed to. Gets me off every time." 

Inanna didn't know what she meant. "Why shouldn't we? There's nothing wrong with it." Just because he hadn't had sex with anyone but Baal, since they'd started, it didn't mean he couldn't. 

Lucifer laughed, low and wicked. "Why don't you ask your boyfriend about that?"

"He…" Inanna planned to tell her that Baal knew, he knew what Inanna was, he knew what Inanna needed, but they hadn't talked about it, Baal and him. They hadn't discussed that, sometimes, Inanna would have sex with other people, but Baal was the only one he'd make love to. "He'll understand."

He would. He had to. Baal would understand that it didn't matter how many warm bodies he tumbled into bed with, Baal was the only one Inanna wanted to come home to, the only one he wanted more from. He'd understand.

Lucifer was still laughing. There was a sinking feeling in Inanna's stomach.

Baal would understand. They would talk about it, and he would understand.

* * *

_VIII._

Baal didn't understand.

Baal had yelled, had paced, had thrown a sculpture across the room, while Inanna stood, hands folded, feeling small. "I didn't know. I didn't know it wasn't… you didn't tell me."

"I shouldn't have to!" Baal stopped, his back to Inanna. He hadn't even looked at him, since he'd told him about Lucifer. It was almost like Inanna was invisible. "I shouldn't have to tell you. When people are together, they don't fuck other people."

It didn't make sense to Inanna. Inanna thought that, maybe, he didn't make sense to Baal.

"Next time…"

"Next time?" Baal still wouldn't look at him. Inanna wished he would turn around. If he turned around, maybe Inanna could convince him of how sorry he was. That he would make sure Baal knew, first, when he slept with someone else. That Baal was alright. "There won't be a next time. You cheated on me. With _Lucifer_. Why the hell would I wait around for you to do it again?"

Inanna swallowed, or tried to. There was a knot in his throat that he couldn't find his way around. Not even to speak. 

The silence lingered, a pause between the lightning and the thunder.

Baal was further away than he had ever been before.

"Get your shit and get out." 

Inanna should have known it was coming. He should have known… but he didn't. He hadn't expected it. He'd thought they'd work through it. They'd work it out.

"Baal." It was all he could manage. It wasn't enough. It was too late.

Baal looked. Anything else Inanna might have said died in his throat when he saw red-rimmed eyes. "Goodbye, Zahid."

Inanna hadn't known. He hadn't known that Baal had looked. That he'd seen the smudges of pencil lines covered by stark black ink and brilliant color.

He thought, maybe, Baal could have loved Zahid, after all.

"Goodbye, Valentine."

Inanna was in hell.

* * *

_"What did you want to tell Baal?"_  
_"Nothing much. Just that I loved him and never meant to hurt him. I'm a big sap."_  
—Baphomet  & Inanna


End file.
